On the horizon: painless vaccination, new organs

The advances in medicine come daily.

A cluster of stem cells is encouraged to turn into blood vessels.

Growing living tissue and organs in the lab would be a life-saving trick. But replicating the complexity of an organ, by growing different types of cells in precisely the right arrangement—muscle held together with connective tissue and threaded with blood vessels, for example—is currently impossible. Researchers at MIT have taken a step toward this goal by coming up with a way to make "building blocks" containing different kinds of tissue that can be put together.

A new process for creating a personalized vaccine may become a crucial tool in helping patients with colorectal cancer develop an immune response against their own tumors. This dendritic cell (DC) vaccine, developed at Dartmouth and described in a research paper published this week in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases. 

A spray solution of a patient's own stem cells is healing their severe burns. So far, early experiments under a University of Utah pilot project are showing some remarkable results.

A new breakthrough in imaging technology using a combination of light and sound will allow health care providers to see microscopic details inside the body. Access to this level of detail potentially eliminates the need for some invasive biopsies, but it also has the potential to help health care providers make diagnoses earlier than ever before -- even before symptoms arise.

Doctors perform the world's first trachea transplant using stem cells to regenerate tissue. They took tissue from her nose and bone marrow stem cells to create a trachea biologically identical to the original organ.

An array of dissolving microneedles is shown on a fingertip.

Researchers are advancing a technology for the painless, self-administration of flu vaccine using patches containing tiny microneedles that dissolve into the skin.